Mauricio Pochettino has been sacked as the Tottenham Hotspur manager and replaced by Jose Mourinho who has formerly managed Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Porto and Inter Milan winning 25 honours across countries.
Pochettino, who was appointed as manager of the north London club in 2014 from Southampton, took Spurs to the final of the 2019 Champions League but lost to Liverpool. The Argentine manager took Spurs to top 5 finishes in each one of his seasons at the helm of the club and made them a force to be reckoned with, working with a massively dented transfer war-chest.
But, this season has been a disappointment which, along with other reasons, culminated in his sacking.
Let’s take a look at 3 reasons why Tottenham could have taken the decision
Poor start to the season
Spurs have had a terrible start to the season, garnering only 14 points from the opening 12 games of the season. Pochettino led them to just 3 wins while losing 4 games. This is a huge fall from last season when they had won 9 of the opening 12 games of the season.
The issues in the league continued from the end of last season when Spurs lost 7 of their last 12 games while winning just 3 times. This resulted in them losing third place to Chelsea on the league table.
So the torrid form was not a flash in the pan but had been a worrying aspect for around 24 games now.
Taken the team as far as possible
Pochettino had done a tremendous job at Spurs, taking them from a side that underperformed consistently, to a side that competed hard with the best and regularly finished in the Champions League spots. The former Southampton manager also took them to the Champions League final, which was perhaps one of the biggest achievements for the club in the last two decades.
Pochettino developed and groomed several young players, as well as some experienced pros, but quite a few of them could be coming to the end of their Spurs career. The likes of Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen could leave the club at the end of the season as their contracts are set to expire. These three, along with Dele Alli and Harry Kane, have been instrumental in Spurs’ recent successes.
An overhaul is clearly the need of the hour and many believed that instead of overseeing that overhaul, all the parties will be better served if Pochettino was a part of it.
Relationship with Daniel Levy
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is infamous for his ability to play hardball till the end of time especially when it came to transfer dealings and contract negotiations. He opened his cheque book to allow Pochettino to sign a few players, but it is widely accepted that Spurs need more players to come in to strengthen their squad.
Pochettino had revealed that he was only a “coach” and that decisions regarding selling and buying players or offering new contracts was the job of Levy’s and not his. This possibly hinted at there being a breakdown in the relationship between the two.
If that was the case, letting go of the manager remained the only viable decision to keep the interest of the club at heart before things spiralled out of control.